but the exercise of real power, which always commands respect.

Some great men are so sensitive that they feel as it were by instinct when to do or leave undone something out of their line. The elder Kean at one of his benefits was advertised to play in an after-piece in which he had to dance. When the dance music had just begun, a slight titter was heard from some one who evidently thought it funny that the great tragedian should so condescend. Kean's leg seemed suddenly to give way. He put his hand to it, and limped off the stage, and Elliston came forward with a grave face, and made one of his elaborate apologies. Kean said he could detect a sneer in any part of the theatre.

But the time comes, or ought to come, in the course of a man's life in which he regards his past failures with complacency. I have now arrived at that time of life when I can look back with indifference alike on failures as on successes. All that could die of the dear partner of three-andthirty years of my life, who knew how to mitigate failures and stimulate successes, reposes beneath the brow of Highgate Hill. The friends who cheered my fireside, accompanied me in my walks, or wrote pleasant letters and discussed with me the various objects of our common pursuits and avocations, are nearly all gone. In losing them I have lost much of the stimulus to exertion that formerly gave elasticity to my work, and I am content to withdraw from the intellectual contest. I can, however, still enjoy a quiet kind of happiness in my books and apparatus, waiting for the time when I, too, shall disappear. And this waiting is not tedious while there still remain many sources of personal comfort and mental pleasure. I feel like one who has gone a long way on a long journey, but has not quite finished it; he has

to wait some time at a railway station before the train shall arrive which is to take him to the end of his journey. If he is wise, he will not fret and vex himself at having to wait; but, seated by the fire in the waiting-room, he munches his sandwiches, takes a book from his pocket, and makes the time pass pleasantly enough. I try to do this, in my solitary home, without anxiety or impatience. When the train

arrives I know it will not go off without me, and I live in the confident expectation that she will be waiting for me at my journey's end with her well-known sweet and loving welcome.

[This Essay was written by my dear wife in the year before her death, at the request of a Friendly Discussion Society in Highgate. It was suggested that in order to widen the debate, Zeal should be tracked into more channels than had been done in the Essay. The writer consented to this course, and allowed me to append a supplement.]

THE French Minister Talleyrand, it is said, when giving instructions to a gentleman who had newly entered his office as a Government employé, first laid out before him with great minuteness, the particular duties which would fall to his lot, and then wound up with one general direction or warning: "Now, young man, no zeal." "Point de zèle."

Familiar as this anecdote is, it strikes me with ever new surprise that a minister should be found bold enough and honest enough to present to a novice the hard, naked truth that no zeal, that is (according to the Dictionary meaning of the word), no warmth or fervour of mind, is required in the service of the State. One would have expected him to say,

the sound of the thing: "Throw your best enerhe work: give your whole heart and mind to it, eful country will appreciate and reward your zeal." ever may have been the motives which led the nister thus to warn one of his own excitable cominst the slightest display of zeal, we are surely safe tter-of-fact, common-sense England of ours) from rous manifestation of that quality. We do not find our Government employés, or any other kind , possessed with such a burning enthusiasm for inted tasks that they need to be called to account ore by the heads of their respective departments, ve the warning gravely sounded in their ears, zèle." There is a solidity, if not a stolidity, about portion of our people, which makes it exceedingly rouse them to vigorous mental action, so that the eir case, seems to be to use every lawful means to heir zeal, and to avoid everything which would be amp or repress it.

we look about us a little, we shall find, in the nd social life of England, just the same dread of t which is conveyed by the speech of Talleyrand. ic man begins to display it, in the energetic disbusiness or in the unflinching exposure of is sure to be snubbed, and, if possible, put down. on in society look or speak or act with the impulse y which betray zeal, he is either regarded leniently e who will know better some day, or severely as person, unfit for good society. In fact, there exist in certain circles a general conspiracy to put -to quench and extinguish it as you would a on fire; and, by the same means, namely, the wet

blank watch heat,

victin

tive

seren illum

said, Bella

inde your

ear

in th

blanket. This damping process, steadily persevered watchfully re-applied on the slightest appearance of heat, will bring down the temperature wonderfu victims will at length be distinguished by an under tive manner, a countenance bearing the mask of serenity, and a smile as cold as a wintry sunbeam illuminates without warming the landscape. It was said, by the mother of a female victim of this syste Bella is never taken by surprise-never forgets hersel indeed, I think you might safely relate to this you your most affecting anecdote, or you might pour ear your choicest witticisms without the slightest in the one case of dimming the lustre of those cal eyes by a sudden tear, or in the other of spoil expression of that polite, well-formed mouth by an u burst of laughter.

Will any one deny that such are, or have been, th of the training of the fashionable world? Is not e of us familiar with at least a few specimens of perso under the same repressive system, have grow the same outward and very uninteresting unifor character, until they are scarcely more easy to vidualised than the members of a rifle corps standin you in their universal suit of drab or grey? A litt or a little shorter, a little stouter, or a little thin may be than the other; but they are all clad in tl uniform, and have the same headgear; they are jected to the same drill, go through the same exerci follow the same leader: with this important differer rifle corps is trained to action, the fashionable inaction; the rifle corps is, or ought to be, actu generous zeal for the good of the country; the fas